The city is shelling out an average of $3,000-a-month each for 800 apartments that would normally rent for $600 to $800 to provide temporary housing for homeless families.

Many of the marked-up furnished dwellings are in run-down complexes, where the rooms are cramped and the buildings are in disrepair, according to residents, tenant groups and advocates for the homeless.

The one- and two-bedroom pots of gold are used by the city as way stations for the homeless in an effort to avoid court-imposed fines for not sheltering needy families.

Landlords are paid an average of $100-a-day for the short-term transition housing. Its sole purpose is to keep homeless adults and their children off the street until they can be placed in shelters for long-term stays while they await placement in permanent housing.

“That’s a great deal for the landlords,” said Patrick Markee, a policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless.

The six-month-old program, known as “scattered-site housing,” has outraged homeless advocates and tenant groups alike.

Homeless advocates are angry because they believe the taxpayer money used to pay the exorbitant rents -more than five times the fair market value in some cases -could be better spent on more permanent housing or additional shelter space.

Tenant groups, in turn, say the program takes affordable apartments off the market and forces permanent residents to live among people who have no commitment to their buildings.

“The entire program illustrates how problematic the city’s approach has been,” said Steven Banks, a Legal Aid Society lawyer who represents homeless families.

Even while the city complains in court that there’s no permanent housing available, it’s “paying thousands of dollars to rent temporary apartments as shelter,” he said.

City officials defended the scattered-site program, even touted it, saying the pricey rents are cheaper than the $200-a day fines per family the city faces for failing to provide shelter for families seeking it.

Robert Mascali, chief of staff for the city’s Department of Homeless Services, said the Giuliani administration is under court order to shelter families within 24 hours of their request for placement.

Those who couldn’t fit in the shelters were generally housed temporarily in $100-a-night, kitchen-equipped hotel rooms, as required by the court.

But six months ago, Mascali said, there were no more hotel rooms available and the agency asked landlords to help accommodate the city’s 6,000 homeless families at the same $100-a-night rate.

“They’re coming into the system faster than we can move other people out,” Mascali said of the homeless.

He added that his agency would like the landlords to make their 800 scattered-site apartments available as permanent dwellings, but the city can’t force them to accept the federal subsidies that homeless families often need to pay their rent.

In the meantime, Mascali said, the city is providing financial incentives to landlords who rent permanently to homeless families, sometimes doubling the bonus it pays to subsidize a tenant’s share of the rent.

But critics say there is no bigger landlord incentive than the prospect of $3,000 for a living room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen that would normally fetch no more than $800.

“We have to be sure that the city’s not being a cash cow for slumlords,” said Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. (D-Bronx).

Diaz’s Manor Avenue district office is just a half-block away from an apartment building where a number of units are rented at $100-a-day to shelter homeless families.

Tenants in the building at 1101 Manor Ave. said conditions in the building have deteriorated since its front entrance became a revolving door for homeless families.

“I don’t know who comes and goes,” said Newton Lightfoot, a disabled veteran who pays his $810 monthly rent with help from a federal subsidy.

“It’s not the people themselves, but the quality of life going down when people don’t have an interest in the building.”

Landlord’s participating in the scattered-site program either refused to comment or could not be reached, and Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, a landlord group, did not return calls for comment.

Step by step process homeless placement process:

Step 1. A homeless family starts process the placement in Department of Homeless Services Emergency Assistance Unit at 151 East 151st Street in the Bronx, where adults and children stay – sometimes in sleeping bags, sometimes on benches – until space in a temporary or long-term facility is available.

Step 2. If long-term space is not available in a shelter, a family is placed in a short-term facility. The city pays an average of $100-per-night for short term family stays in hotels or $3,000-a-month rented “scattered-site” apartments. Those stays can range between 10 days and several months.

Step 3. When the short-term stay expires, a family is then placed in a long-term shelter, a stay which typically lasts between nine months and a year. If space in a shelter is not available, families are placed in other short-term hotels or apartments or back at the Emergency Assistance Unit.

Step 4. Twelve months, and sometimes $36,000 later, family is placed in a permanent home.